


ticking by

by writingdice



Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: M/M, Soulmate AU, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-13 04:26:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 703
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16885611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingdice/pseuds/writingdice
Summary: Soulmate AU. When you meet your soulmate you can hear a clock ticking all the time and when it speeds up it means that your soulmate is about to die.





	ticking by

Ever since they were infants they had been able to hear their clocks. Ma had jokingly said that they must have met their soulmates while on the nursery at the hospital. They were just toddlers but they knew.

They couldn’t be separated. Their parents had tried enough times and it only ended in high pitched screams and tears.

“Weird twin mumbo jumbo”, Ma Pines would say casually when people asked her why they held so tightly to each other. Waving the curious away with her left hand and charging them accordingly with her right hand; for her psychic wisdom, of course. Information has never been free.

“You are both weirdos”, she would joke with a warm smile. Kissing their foreheads and pinching their cheeks.

* * *

Their clocks were perfectly synchronized. A soft tick tock in the background of their lives.

They smiled, running and playing carefree in the beach, knowing they had time to spare. Knowing that the other was not in danger.

Building the boat. Going to prom. Driving around late at night on the Stanley Mobile. Listening to the radio. Kissing in the backseat. The tick tock of their clocks was always present but they didn’t mind them. It was just a fact of their bond, something that had always been there.

Their clocks were perfectly synchronized.

* * *

Until one day they were not.

* * *

Stanley’s homeless life had been more than dangerous. Stanford knew this because his clock was always either speeding up until it was just a frantic noise inside his head or slowing down until he could barely register the ticks and tocks as they happened.

Ford couldn’t really know what was happening to his twin. He couldn’t really let himself to care either.

Stanley had ruined his life, his chance at an upbringing into the so called “elite” scientific community he had so desperately wanted to become part of.

Some nights he couldn’t sleep because his twin’s clock was so frenetic it gave him a headache and the pain was too much. Other nights he couldn’t sleep because he was working and studying and striving to be  _perfect_ , to be more than his peers.

And other nights he couldn’t sleep because he would only think of his twin. Sometimes he thought he could see and hear him.

On a particular instance he had seen Stan sitting on the border of a bridge, drinking beer with someone he didn’t know.

“Dare ya to jump”, Stanley had said and the clock had sped up considerably.

“O— Oh yeah? Do— Double dare ya, motherfucker”, the stranger had said, burping and standing up. Stan following shortly after.

“Ya ready, pal?”, Stan had been smiling, not even scared.

“Let’s — let’s do it already, you fuck face. We can’t stand here forever”

And then there had been a terrifying second where they had really looked like they would reeally jump. But then a police spotted them and they ran like hell for Stanley’s car and drove away into the night. Laughing histerically, trying to hide away the sobs that escaped their thoats from time to time.

But that had been only an absurd late night hallucination. Fragments of his imagination and yearning that poisoned his mind and strayed him from his goals.

* * *

At this point of his life, Stanford should probably be used to the clock speeding up. But he really isn’t and he can’t understand how Stan keeps getting into situations that endanger his life.

“Selfish imbecile”, he mutters as he walks inside the cave where he might find the answers he had been searching for years; oblivious of the fact that his own clock is slowly speeding up too.

* * *

He hears it again.

He’s working on the portal and it takes him by surprise.

He feels cold and collapses on his knees. He can’t breathe. Fiddleford rushes to his side and asks him what’s wrong but he can’t hear him.

He feels water, cold water. He hears splashes and Stanley grunting in pain as he settles in a bathtub. He smells smoke. He hears a broken laugh and a sob. He hears a failing, cheap electric wire.

“It’s better this way. I’m sorry”

And then… silence. Complete silence.

* * *

Ford stops working on the portal.


End file.
